Some of them make mild sense. England in French is Angleterre (Add a few accents over the letters), which I believe translate as Angle land. The land was populated for a time by the Angles. Before being joined by the Saxons. Hence Anglo-Saxon.

Angles, Saxons and Jutes came over at around the same time. I think it may have been the Saxons who came first but the language of the Angles became the common speech between them, so the Angle-speaking lands eventually became England.

Also the Germanic invaders never really populated the land, they displaced and subsumed the warrior and noble classes but, whilst they did bring some settlers, the population remained mostly Britons.

Angles, Saxons and Jutes came over at around the same time. I think it may have been the Saxons who came first but the language of the Angles became the common speech between them, so the Angle-speaking lands eventually became England.

Also the Germanic invaders never really populated the land, they displaced and subsumed the warrior and noble classes but, whilst they did bring some settlers, the population remained mostly Britons.

Iceland (icelandic Ísland) is Islandia in Spanish, a loan of the original name, but without carrying the original meaning (which the English got right). So, for a spanish speaker, islandia appears to mean "land of the island".
We also attempted the loan system for Greenland, which we call Groenlandia from the danish Grønland (-oe- is the transliteration of /ø/). For us, it just sounds weird.

Like the French, we call England "Inglaterra" and Germany "Alemania". I'm willing to bet they are actually loans from the French language. Spanish got plenty of loans from French, mostly from the status of

Portugal is a peculiar case. Originally, the city of Porto (which we call O'Porto in Spanish) was called Portugal (Portus Cale in Latin). When the county of Portugal became independent, both the new country and the city received the same name. Eventually the city dropped it becoming only "o Porto" (Portuguese for "the harbor") as it was the most important harbor of Portugal.

And Greece? The Greeks themselves call their country Hellas, the Hellada. The rest of the world call them a corrupted version of the Latin word Graecia. Why? Because the Romans extended the name of a region (nowadays called Dodoni, in Epirus), which might have been the first Greek-speaking area they found. This region had received its name from a mythological hero, Graikos.
This isn't too unlike why my homeland, Galicia, has that name: the southernmost tribes of Galicia, in times of the Greek explorers, and later ing the Roman conquest, were called the Kallaikoi. The location of the ancient Kallaikoi is nowadays, in fact, outside of Galicia (in north Portugal to be precise).

No, they just didn't bring large enough numbers to significantly change the population.

True.
This happened to all the Germanic peoples that settled in the Roman Empire. It all boils down to Rome having a much more developed agriculture that could sustain much higher population densities. Once the different Germanic peoples arrived and settled, their contribution to the genetic pool was like a drop in a bottle (a barrel would be an exaggeration).

This doesn't apply to all countries, specifically Germany/Deutschland, but some country names are words rather than names, know what I mean? Like United States. United is a word of its own, and so is States. So in Spanish it's Estados Unidos, Estados meaning states and Unidos meaning united.

I think that genocide was outside what was possible for the Germanics. Yes, you could wipe out an entire city, but in the very late Roman empire, most citizens had fled cities to the villae, or to join other paramilitary organizations. Population had migrated massively to the country-side.

There's also what i like to call "the acorn factor": during the anti-nobility revolts in my homeland in the XV century, the nobles decided against punishing their vassals with death. Why? Let it be illustrated by the conversation between two famous nobles, the Marshall Pardo de Cela and the Count of Lemos.
Marshall: "Let's hang all the vassals from the oak-trees!"
Count: "And what should we do after? Live off acorns?"

Against what George R. R. Martin would have us believe, peasants were not routinely slaughtered during wars between nobles. A land without indentured peasants had no value, and it was not worth warring over (what were the nobles going to do? cultivate it themselves?). Peasants died, yes, and their life was't worth overall much, it was a short and brutal existence, but they were more like to die of hunger and disease than as collateral damage. Nobles would also keep granary reserves for their peasants in case for some reason the harvest would be very bad, so as to lose as little peasants as possible*.

*Incidentally, many free peasants (the villains) would end up as indentured servants during famine years, as they would be granted access to nobility granaries in exchange for giving their lands, and themselves up in servitude.

That's about 5 centuries later, I'm not sure how the Jutes and the Danes were related at that point but the wars that lead up to that massacre were part of the later norse attempts to invade what had newly become England after the Angles/Saxons/Jutes had integrated with the population.

That's about 5 centuries later, I'm not sure how the Jutes and the Danes were related at that point but the wars that lead up to that massacre were part of the later norse attempts to invade what had newly become England after the Angles/Saxons/Jutes had integrated with the population.

Jutland is part of Denmark. Jutes is still the demonym for anyone living there.

Also country name like Finland is much easier to pronounce for many other cultures than using it's real name Suomi. Most of you say it like Soomi or Somi or Soumi.
Anyway I dunno why it's called Finland in english and many other countries with similar language with england.

Well the way a culture calls a country can have a bunch of history behind them (like Germans calling France the kingdom of the Franks). We simply don't standardise this stuff across cultures, situations, histories and languages, so it can't really be helped.

---------- Post added 2012-12-04 at 01:37 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Dhrizzle

Angles, Saxons and Jutes came over at around the same time. I think it may have been the Saxons who came first but the language of the Angles became the common speech between them, so the Angle-speaking lands eventually became England.

Pretty sure they had essentially the same language though. Traditionally Angles and Saxons settled in different areas, but they (logically) merged into the same Germanic group quite quickly.

No, they just didn't bring large enough numbers to significantly change the population.

Didn't they found cities like Dublin though? I think English got around 1000(nothing compared to the influence French has had)words that has old norse origin, thursday(thors day) being an obvious example, but also less obvious words like Kraken.

The nerve is called the "nerve of awareness". You cant dissect it. Its a current that runs up the center of your spine. I dont know if any of you have sat down, crossed your legs, smoked DMT, and watch what happens... but what happens to me is this big thing goes RRRRRRRRRAAAAAWWW! up my spine and flashes in my brain... well apparently thats whats going to happen if I do this stuff...